Posted on 04/10/2003 7:01:42 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Cuba Sentences Last of 75 Dissidents in Crackdown
ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2003
(04-10) 15:32 PDT HAVANA (AP) --
Cuba on Wednesday sentenced the last of 75 dissidents convicted after one-day trials of collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine the communist government.
Governments and human rights groups around the world have condemned the speedy crackdown, which began with a massive roundup of opponents on March 18. The subsequent trials resulted in sentences ranging from 6 to 28 years.
The United States has denied the government allegations, calling the moves "symptomatic of the dictatorship of the Cuban regime."
"There has never been anything similar to this in the history of Cuba," said Elizardo Sanchez, whose Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation has monitored the arrests and trials.
"This is not the end of the peaceful opposition," said pro-democracy activist Oswaldo Paya, who escaped the crackdown.
Cuba also has faced criticism for the speed of the prosecutions with opponents saying they were carried out when the world's attention was focused on the Iraq war. But Cuba has denied the charges, saying the arrests came before the start of the fighting.
The four sentences announced Thursday included a 25-year term for dissident physician Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet.
The defendants were accused of receiving money from U.S. government and working with Washington to undermine the socialist regime.
Tensions between Havana and Washington have increased since U.S. Interests Section Chief James Cason, the top U.S. diplomat in Havana, began assuming a higher profile in his support of the opposition.
Cason denies accusations that the U.S. Interests Section had dissidents on the payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than American embassies in other countries.
Cuban opposition leaders on Thursday urged a further international censure of Fidel Castro's government.
"We call on all democratic governments and organizations of the world -- that have not done so already -- so to openly reject this wave of repression," read a letter signed by five leaders of the local opposition.
"We direct this call in particular to our brother countries in Latin America, which up to now have not spoken out in this needed censure of the only totalitarian regime" in the region.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque has defended the quick trials and heavy sentences, saying increased hostility from Washington forced Cuba to protect itself from a U.S.-backed opposition trying to topple the government.
"There has been an obsession by the governments of the United States to fabricate an opposition in Cuba, to create a fifth column," Perez Roque said Wednesday.
Perez Roque also read from a letter written by President Bush to Biscet, congratulating the doctor -- who was sentenced Thursday -- for winning the Democracy's People Award from the International Republican Institute in February.
"I find this letter very strange," Perez Roque said, adding that Bush had never written a letter to well-known government doctors and researchers who have developed vaccines against illnesses such as meningitis.
The foreign minister said the dissidents were not charged with criticizing the government, but for receiving American government funds and collaborating with U.S. diplomats.
Perez Roque presented letters and detailed lists of payments he said proved the defendants were getting money from the U.S. government.
For instance, Perez Roque said that in the home of independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, investigators found evidence that over one year he received $7,154 -- a huge sum in a country where an average government salary is $25 a month. A wad of $13,000 in cash allegedly was found stashed in the lining of a jacket.
Espinosa Chepe, who wrote about the Cuban economy for Web sites in Miami, was sentenced to 20 years.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has given more than $20 million since 1997 to non-governmental groups in the United States to support Cuban's opposition movement and promote democracy, human rights and free enterprise on the communist island.
If the liberals had there way they would tell you that the people of Iraq are better off being tortured and murdered by SH.
Just goes to show how shallow and self absorbed the Martain Sheens of American really are.
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